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Gym visits 'increase with age'

As people get older they become more interested in maintaining a healthy, active life, new research indicates.

As part of a major study, Nuffield Health assessed the gym habits of 120,000 fitness and wellbeing centre members.

It discovered that compared to teenage gym goers, older members make 20 extra visits to fitness centres on average, on an annual basis.

The number of annual visits people make to the gym increases four-fold for each decade that passes, the data suggests, with visits peaking once adults reach the age of 66.

The research found that a typical gym goer would visit their fitness centre 3,767 times, if they joined at the age of 18 and continued to attend for 60 years.

Commenting on the data, Laura Kerby, managing director of consumer wellbeing at Nuffield Health, said: 'Far from only being the domain of the young, our fitness and wellbeing centres also have a very solid number of older members wanting to maintain and improve their overall health and fitness.'